Eddie Murphy is Topping the Music Charts With a Reggae Tune

While you were busy watching Norbit (again) and getting ready to celebrate 40 years of Saturday Night Live, Eddie Murphy was climbing the Billboard Reggae charts with his new song, “Oh Jah Jah”.

Murphy may be best known for trying to make people laugh with roles on SNL, Shrek,Trading Places,Coming to America, and Beverly Hills Cop to name a few entries from his resumé, but he takes his music very seriously. His latest musical effort is currently at No. 4 on the Billboard Reggae Charts and No. 1 on the iTunes Reggae channel, it seemed like a good time to look back at Murphy’s oft-overlooked musical side hustle.

Murphy’s debut comedy album came out in 1982 and featured two parody songs, which showed off both his vocal and comedy skills, but is fairly embarrassing to listen to in 2015. Still, if you ever find yourself needing to entertain a house full of 7-year olds, “Boogie in Your Butt” should do the trick:

Murphy’s debut musical album How Could It Be came out in 1985 a.k.a. while most Shrek fans were still zygotes. The album featured two Stevie Wonder tracks, “Do I” and “Everything’s Coming Up Roses”, but both were outshone by Murphy’s most famous song to-date—“Party All the Time” written, produced, and featuring Super Freak himself, Rick James. It hit No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was one of the biggest songs of both Murphy’s and James’s careers.

In 1989, Murphy was back with So Happy, which was the ultimate ’80s record with sexy synths and even sexier saxophone jams all over the album. So Happy had two singles, “Put Your Mouth on Me” and “Till the Money's Gone”, but the real stand-out track is “Let’s Get With It,” which was co-written by Larry Blackmon, who was best known for writing the Cameo hit “Word Up.” That fact pretty much tells you everything you need to know about the song and the album.

While one would think that working with Rick James would be the highlight of any musical career, Murphy actually managed to top that by teaming up with none other than the King of Pop, Michael Jackson, in 1993. Their effort, “Whatzupwitu”, was a light-hearted R & B confection from Murphy’s 1993 full-length album, Love’s Alright. The song came with a era-appropriate strange video that would not be out of place on an Adult Swim show. While Jackson did not need the extra publicity, he was just swapping favors from when Murphy appeared in Jackson’s own delightfully strange Ancient Egypt-themed video for “Remember the Time” that featured Murphy as a Pharaoh, Iman as his bored queen, and Magic Johnson as a court jester type. They can’t all be “Thriller” you know?

“Oh Jah Jah” is not Murphy’s first journey into the reggae genre, because in the words of Portlandia, Murphy is openly reggae. Not only did Murphy sing the catchy reggae song “Kill the White People” on SNL, but on Love’s Alright, Murphy teamed up with the legendary Jamaican dancehall artist Shabba Ranks on “I Was A King.” Despite the big-name artists featured on the album, it was neither a critical nor a commercial success, which may be why it was Murphy’s last full-length musical release.

Then, in 2013, Murphy collaborated on “Red Light” with Snoop Dogg’s reggae playing alter-ego Snoop Lion. The video racked up over 5,000,000 YouTube views. According to Murphy, it was this success that lead him to release “Oh Jah Jah”.

He followed “Red Light” with “Temporary” and the retro R&B jam “Promise (You Won’t Break My Heart)”. As for “Oh Jah Jah,” the song was inspired by news of the Ebola outbreak, according to Murphy in an interview with Billboard. “I was on the balcony watching the news and the song basically came together right there -- with me taking it all in and playing chords on my guitar. So I wanted to put it out now because it felt timely,” Murphy said.

Murphy will be featured on tonight’s SNL 40th anniversary show and while there are a lot of reasons to tune in, the possibility of Murphy singing is definitely one of them.